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It turns out that Donald Trump has in the past made some very raunchy jokes about women, the kinds of things we only expect to hear from juvenile boys in the locker room, and in Seth Rogan “comedies”. I’m sure that comes as a big surprise to absolutely no one, except maybe some yokel living in a cave somewhere, completely isolated from TV and newspapers and utterly oblivious up to now of who Trump even is.

Of course, the Dem/socialists and their sycophants and accomplices in the mainstream media are all over this like white on rice, throwing fainting spells, gasping into their hankies, and ginning up their faux outrage machine.

Right along with them are the pansies from the Establishment GOP, those spineless hacks who wouldn’t know an actual principle if it walked up and smacked them in the face. The same pantywaists who thought “Jebbie!!” was a great candidate, when they weren’t out losing their own elections; people like John “Amnesty” McCain, and Mitt “Aw Shucks” Romney.

Were Trump’s comments despicable? Sure. Were they illegal? Nope. Did they affect any US policy? Nope. Was anybody hurt by them? Nope, except maybe the “feelings” of some liberal snowflakes somewhere, since there were no “trigger warnings” issued so they could go to their “safe spaces” to hide from those “microagressions”.

In the meantime, there’s Bill Clinton running around in this campaign drumming up support for his wife, all the while being fawned over by that same mainstream media. Bill Clinton the convicted perjurer and accused serial rapist. A guy who, as his state’s Governor, corrupted state cops into being his personal pimps. The same guy who sexually molested at least one young female intern right in the Oval Office while President, giving new meaning to the words “there’s nothing like a good cigar”.

The candidate he’s on the stump for? His wife, Her Royal Arrogance, Miss Pantsuit Clinton, an unindicted federal felon and pathological liar, whose career of corruption is so far-reaching – from Travelgate to the Rose Law Firm to the “Bimbo Eruptions” right up to her email scandal and sham “Foundation” slush fund – that just about everyone who enters her circle gets sucked in, like light into a black hole. A woman whose policies as a failed Secretary of State have led directly to the meltdown in the Middle East, to the cost of thousands of lives and a vast amount of this country’s fortune.

Yet what do all those allegedly “objective” reporters, and columnists, and limp-wristed political hacks focus their attention on?

Trump’s stupid jokes.

The only real upside to this election that I can see is that the overwhelming hypocrisy of the mainstream media AND the Establishment GOP, as well as the absolute lack of any standards of decency of the Dem/socialist party, are all being fully exposed in the harsh glare of the spotlight for all to see.

Will this country apply its collective wisdom to benefit from this experience?

Remember the 1989 movie “Weekend at Bernie’s”? Two amiable losers try to convince everyone that their dead boss is still alive by hauling his body around everywhere, manipulating his dead limbs, and posing him like a mannequin in various party settings.

Well, in a presidential election year that seemingly couldn’t get any more bizarre, what with the two leading candidates in a dead heat for the Least Popular Person On The Planet Award, we have a new wrinkle thrown into the mix.

At last week’s New York City event commemorating the 9/11 Twin Towers disaster, Hillary Clinton collapsed and had to be hustled into a waiting van by her aides and security detail and rushed to either a hospital, or her daughter’s apartment, depending on who’s telling the story. Video of the event has gone viral, and shows Clinton collapsing and being hoisted into a van, losing one of her shoes in the process, which was later retrieved by an NYPD cop.

Clinton’s health has been at issue for quite a while, and this certainly adds fuel to the fire. I sure can’t remember any candidate in my lifetime who’s had so many overt and obvious health concerns, what with all the hacking and coughing, weird facial expressions and gestures, and need to be physically helped up and down stairs (as seen in so many pictures). And now this latest episode.

It got me to wondering if she’d ever actually tell the truth (for once!) about her health issues, and withdraw if she wasn’t really physically up to the job.

Frankly, I don’t see her dropping out even if it ends up being the “Weekend At Bernie’s” campaign.

I can see her being carried around by Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, propping her up under each arm, with sunglasses perched on her face. Everything she’s done since her perjuring husband left office in 2001 has been geared toward running for Prez; she’s a complete megalomaniac; and at her age this is her last and only chance.

So prepare yourselves, folks! This truly bizarre campaign season is poised to become even weirder!

On 19 August the Signal, my local newspaper, published an editorial entitled “Our View: Yes on Prop 62” in which they supported that ballot proposition, which would abolish the death penalty in this state. You can read their editorial here:Signal editorial

I might be more inclined to support this idea if a “life sentence” actually meant the bad guy was going to die in prison. It doesn’t.

FAR too many times they’re paroled out, or released because of “health concerns”, or get their case reopened because some lawyer found some technicality to exploit leading to a new trial LONG after witnesses have died or disappeared or forgotten details of the crime, and evidence has deteriorated.

Their victims don’t get to benefit from any of this kind of “compassion” and “justice”. They get to just stay dead.

The death penalty is only meted out to the worst of the worst. Read about Clarence Ray Allen, the last guy executed in this state: Clarence Allen pdf . The guy was a waste of skin, and doesn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy.

Further, the fact that no one’s been actually executed since 2006 simply means that the process has become too protracted. Simplify and speed up the appeals process, and limit convicts’ number of bites of the apple. As it stands now, clever attorneys simply file appeal after appeal in a generally successful effort to run out the clock on these guys.

To quote the Signal column, “According to Amnesty International USA, 10 wrongfully convicted individuals were released from death rows across the country in 2003 alone”.

That could have several different meanings. Procedural errors in the prosecution comes immediately to mind, for example, which is in no way the same thing as innocence.

In fact, at best all that statistic really does is suggest that the appellate process is successful in preventing wrongful executions. At worst, it suggests that a lot of people are gaming the system. Either way, if there were even one actual instance of a convict being wrongfully executed, I’m sure we’d have heard about it.

Further, there’s a cost to many of our social policies. Thousands of truly innocent people die every year in traffic accidents. But we don’t ban cars, nor do we have a maximum speed limit of 15 MPH. We simply accept those deaths as the cost of that policy.

I know that if my daughter were murdered I wouldn’t think justice had been served until her killer was put to death, because that’s when the punishment truly fits the crime. Even at that, I’d be settling, because those few who get the death penalty have to have committed crimes that were especially heinous, and the state’s execution process is merciful by comparison to their crimes.

And that’s the bottom line. The criminal justice system is part of our social contract, put there to prevent our society from becoming a place in which people are all running around meting out their own personal justice. BUT, society’s “justice” must be perceived as being actually just, and letting merciless killers live out their natural lives while their victims are permanently dead is no justice at all.

In the week or so that’s passed since Trump secured the official GOP nomination as their candidate for President, I’ve watched that party tear itself to shreds.

As I noted in my last column, “The GOP is in reality the PSP — the Perpetually Stupid Party”.

For years they’ve ignored their inherent base supporters, traditional conservatives, instead treating them like redheaded step-children. The unrest of that base has long been obvious, as evidenced by the failures of McCain and Romney in their own presidential bids, not to mention how tight Bush’s two contests were against incredibly inept opponents, Gore and Kerry.

Did the PSP learn anything from all those years of declining support? No, they did not. And the result is the success of the populist uprising led by Trump.

Like it or not, he is the official candidate of the Republican Party.

So, what’s been the response of the usual suspects, the Establishment GOP hacks that have led that party ever-leftward? To throw an extreme hissy-fit, like a passel of spoiled brats. Is Trump a great candidate? Heck no! I spent a year pointing out some of his obvious flaws. But he IS their candidate, won fairly and squarely.

His opponent is Her Royal Arrogance Clinton, probably the single most beatable Dem/socialist in a couple of decades; a woman with more baggage than a cruise liner.

But instead of rallying around their official nominee, the PSP is indulging in a nihilistic paroxysm of pique and self-destruction. Many of the former candidates are refusing to honor their pledge to support the eventual victor of the primary, a pledge that Trump finally and begrudgingly did sign. Where’s their honor now? At least one prominent member of the PSP – Meg Whitman – has gone so far (as of this writing) as to actually endorse Clinton. Amazing!

The end result is that the PSP has set Trump as the target of their circular firing squad.

The possible upside to all this turmoil is that we could hopefully see the GOP, like a phoenix arising from the ashes of its own destruction, change its errant ways and rededicate itself to actually acting like it believes in the principles it claims to support.

The downside is that it’s taking place at the worst possible time, when the Dem/socialist candidate is a person so unfit for office, and whose policies are so destructive, that the country might never recover if she wins the election.

Neither will John Kasich, Bernie Sanders, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, nor the Green Party’s Jill Stein. That’s just a fact of life, and we’d all better get used to it.

In the 2008 election pitting McCain against Obama, I voted for Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate. I also quit my lifelong membership in the GOP and re-registered as “Decline To State”, this state’s version of Independent. That was because I saw McCain as only very slightly less “progressive” than Obama, a view I still hold to this very day.

There was also the potential benefit in a McCain loss that the GOP – which had already meandered to the Left over the post-Reagan years – would learn a valuable lesson from such a defeat and mend their errant ways.

Well, that clearly didn’t happen, as the Establishment GOP kept to their chosen path, the result of which has finally been a populist uprising resulting in the nomination of outsider Donald Trump as their nominee. Good, bad, or indifferent, that’s the way it is.

I wish I could go into that polling booth in November and cast my ballot for someone else, but I can’t if I want my vote to have any actual relevance, and wishing I could won’t change anything. If wishes were horses, beggars would be riding instead of walking.

The further reality is that even if Trump hadn’t thrown his hat into the ring I’m not sure I would have been able to vote for a real conservative anyway. Over the last decade plus, the Establishment GOP has constantly crept ever-further leftward, scorning the true conservatives in their ranks. How else to explain the nominations of John McCain and Mitt Romney? That, too, is a fact, and further proof that the Establishment GOP is not just stuck on stupid, but super-glued in place. The GOP is in reality the PSP – the Perpetually Stupid Party.

So where does that leave us?

The two major parties have named their candidates, and one thing we know for certain: come January either Clinton or Trump WILL be taking the oath of office as President.

In Trump we have an unknown. A guy who CLAIMS to be conservative, yet has a record of backing leftist causes and policies. An unmitigated blowhard. Someone not familiar with the details and minutiae of policy. Absolutely no record when it comes to elective experience or voting history.

Basically, he’s a pig in a poke. We don’t really know what we’d be getting. He could end up being great; he could end up being an absolute disaster. His presidency could fall somewhere in between. Who knows?

His choice of Mike Pence as his running mate gives me a sound basis for the hope that he’ll follow through on his vow to select solid conservatives as his appointees, both judicial and otherwise. And judicial appointments, particularly to the Supreme Court, are a huge but neglected issue this election.

Then there’s Clinton, certainly not an unknown. In fact, we know FOR CERTAIN what we’d be getting with her, and frankly, it’s an outright disaster for this country. An unindicted federal criminal with a pathological bent for lying. A scandal-ridden crone married to a convicted perjurer and accused serial rapist who’d be re-occupying the White House. A corruptocrat whose policy decisions can seemingly be bought with large “donations” to her sham “foundation”. A woman who can’t point to a single policy success in her term as Secretary of State, and whose big claim to qualification for the office is that she has a uterus. A leftist ideologue who’s vowed to continue, and even expand upon, the disastrous policies of Obama. A die-hard anti-gun fanatic. A woman who will, with absolutely no doubt, appoint the most leftist jurists she can find to nominate to the Supreme Court, changing the dynamic of that institution for decades to come.

For me the defining moment came while I watched FBI Director Comey spend 14 minutes detailing Clinton’s criminal actions, then spend about 1 minute declaring that the FBI would recommend that she NOT be prosecuted for those actions. I was absolutely stunned. As far as I was concerned, that moment defined the depth of the corruption of the Dem/socialist party, and the Obama/Clinton cabal in particular. It’s an outright and blatant corruptocracy.

So there you have it. A summary of two candidates, one of whom WILL be the next President of these United States. It’s certainly clear, at least to me, that no matter how bad a President Trump MAY turn out to be, Clinton would DEFINITELY be orders of magnitude worse.

We conservatives pride ourselves on voting our conscience and our principles. But I think there’s one overriding principle that overshadows all others: the ultimate future of our country. I believe this is the single most important presidential election at least in my lifetime.

I’ve made my decision. In spite of everything I’ve written over the last year, in light of the issues I’ve outlined here I’ve decided to cast my vote for Trump.

Newest fledgling member of the Obama/Clinton corruptocracy

Part 1– Corruption

I just watched FBI Director James Comey make his announcement that his agency is NOT recommending that charges be filed against Hillary Clinton for her blatant “mishandling” of classified information on her home-brew email setup.

He confirmed that there were hundreds of such emails on her jerry-rig setup, with classifications ranging all the way up to Top Secret SAP (Special Access Program); that any and all people cleared for access to classified data are presumed knowledgeable about the requirements for how such data must be handled; that even unintentional security breaches can be considered criminal offenses; that she forwarded emails containing such information to people outside government employment; that she used her wireless devices while in venues and countries where they were extremely vulnerable to being hacked; that the feds had no idea if they were even able to review all the appropriate emails because of the “cleansing” to the hard drives done by her legal team before turning the drives over to the feds; yet he claimed that her political status had nothing to do with the decision not to recommend prosecution.

To quote Comey: “To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences.”

Gee… I wonder what former General David Petraeus thinks about that last claim. I guess he must think it’s a real bummer he wasn’t a Clinton when HIS case was being considered…

Translated into the plain English normal people use, Comey’s saying that Clintons don’t have to obey the same laws as the rest of us mere mortals.

Comey also claims there was “no political influence” on his decision. Um… yeah, right. Bill Clinton boards Attorney-General Janet Lynch’s airplane at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport and has a completely private “conversation” with her for 30 minutes, and we’re supposed to believe that was mere meaningless coincidence. At the exact same time that Comey’s making his announcement Her Royal Arrogance Hillary is on an airplane WITH OBAMA on a pre-announced campaign jaunt, and we’re supposed to believe that it’s not meant to be interpreted by Comey and his minions as a clear signal that he should leave her alone.

“Nothing to see here, folks. Move along”. Or, for fans of The Wizard of Oz, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”.

Take your pick.

Part 2– Criminal Intent

As a person who held a Top Secret clearance, let me explain the requirements for how classified material MUST be handled by law, and the issue of “intent” Comey glossed over.

All classified material must be either in a person’s personal possession, and/or secured in an approved container or facility. It may not be taken from its normal facility except in certain instances, and then only with prior authorization. Period.

Any time you’re not actually using a classified document, it must be secured. That means returned to the safe or lockable file cabinet in which it’s normally stored, or in the case of certain types of documents, returned to the secure storage room.

Let’s say it’s the end of your work day and you’re going home. You forget to return a document to the secure safe and leave it on your desk. Guess what? You just committed a security violation, and you’re gonna be cited for it. I’ve known of people who lost their clearances just for doing that, and that’s CLEARLY unintentional, a mistake.

It’s the end of the workday, and you decide to throw that document in your briefcase and take it home to work on it there. That’s a HUGE no-no, and not only will you be cited and lose your clearance, but you’ll probably be criminally charged, too. And since you INTENDED to take it home, that was clear “intent” to circumvent the law.

Note that there was no “intent” to commit espionage by trying to give it to another entity. There was merely “intent” to circumvent the rules on how to handle documents.

Petreaus was criminally charged under circumstances similar to that last example. But Clinton did EXACTLY the same thing, INTENTIONALLY circumventing the rules on document storage and handling. It was her INTENT to ignore those laws. It wasn’t an “accident” that she had an unsecured server at an unsecured location; it was done ON PURPOSE. Whether or not she “intended” to give the data to other unauthorized people is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT.

That, friends, is the law on handling classified information and documents.

Those servers didn’t just accidentally fall out of the sky and set themselves up in her bathroom.

I’m feelin’ the Bern…!

Everyone who knows me, or my writings, knows I’m about as conservative as it gets. When I became eligible to vote in 1970, I immediately registered as a Republican. Between then and now, though I’ve on occasion voted for “third-party” candidates, I’ve never voted for a Dem/socialist. In fact, in the entire panoply of Democrat politicians, I’ve only ever been aware of two I’d have considered actually voting for prior to today: Zell Miller and Jim Webb.

Going one step further, when the GOP nominated John McCain as their candidate in 2008, I was so disgusted with that result that I quit the GOP and re-registered as “Decline To State” (DTS), California’s equivalent of “Independent”. I even resigned my Life Membership in the NRA over their decision to endorse McCain. That’s how strongly I feel about actual traditional American conservative values and principles; McCain was certainly NO conservative.

So in light of all of that, what’s happened to make me cast my vote today for “the Bern”, Bernie Sanders, self-avowed socialist candidate for the Democrat presidential nomination?

A unique and unlikely confluence of events.

First, California’s goofy and Byzantine election laws permit DTS voters to simply choose at the polling place whether or not they want to vote in any particular party’s presidential primary, and those laws leave it up to the parties to determine for themselves whether or not they’ll allow DTS voters to vote in their primary. This year, the Democrats have chosen to allow DTSers to do so, and the Republicans have chosen not to do so.

Further, as of now that’s actually pretty irrelevant as to the GOP, since Donald Trump has already won enough primary victories to secure the GOP nod, and his opponents have withdrawn from the race. That’s a done deal. So even if it were possible to vote in the GOP primary, why would I even bother?

My hand doing the formerly unthinkable

However, there’s much to be gained by participating in the Democrat primary!

If the Bern were to somehow, magically, secure the Democrat nomination, that would almost certainly guarantee a November defeat for that repugnant party. And, of course, there’s that “other” candidate, Her Royal Arrogance Hillary Clinton. I so thoroughly despise her that it’s almost impossible to pass up the opportunity to throw a few banana peels in the path of her haughty march to the Dem convention in Philly in July. Maybe one of those banana peels could be a Sanders win in California. How could I possibly pass that up?

And so… I did it. I actually cast a vote for a self-avowed socialist Democrat. It didn’t feel as weird as I thought it would, and the hand I used to cast my vote didn’t fall off my wrist or develop blisters, much to my surprise.

So consider this: if I could cast this vote, is it really out of the realm of possibility to think that someplace on this big planet there is actually a herd of unicorns prancing around?

My knowledge and experience as an eminent bio-political socio-anthropologist has enabled me to identify, and name, a previously unrecognized sub-species of human beings (Homo sapiens). I have named this sub-species Homo sapiens democratus horribilis.

This sub-species can be identified by the presence of several distinctive traits:

1. The inability to apply logic, reason, and/or common sense to practical political problems and issues.

2. The inability to consider the actual historical record.

3. The inability to acknowledge the reality of human nature, and consider its effect while seeking real solutions to problems.

4. The propensity to apply wishful thinking to the task of problem-solving while ignoring real-world practical solutions.

Democratus horribilis have an extreme tendency toward self-destruction, particularly as applied to any social institution in which they find themselves that may have well-established social mores, customs, and traditions. Once recognized, they should be quickly removed from any position which may empower them to have influence over such institutions, or control over individual members of that society.

Like this:

Of course, the big news this past week or so is the very sad passing of a legal giant, Antonin Scalia, Justice on the Supreme Court (SCOTUS).

There’s a political knife fight brewing over replacing him, with Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell at this point vowing to block any Obama nomination because he has so little time left in office, while Obama and his minions – including a sycophantic mainstream media – are clamoring that to do so is to subvert the intent expressed in the Advise and Consent Clause of the Constitution.

Indisputably, the Republicans have the authority by virtue of their control of the Senate to proceed however they wish, including blocking Obama’s nominees from confirmation. It’s also indisputable that the Dem/socialists’ ginned up “outrage” is laughably hypocritical. After all, when Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork to SCOTUS, his confirmation was blocked on purely political grounds by a Senate Dem/socialist lynch mob led by Ted Kennedy, and they thought that was just perfectly fine. In fact, they took great pride in it.

Even more hypocritical is that when Bush 2 nominated Sam Alito to SCOTUS back in 2006, a little known Senator from Illinois, one Barrack Hussein Obama, participated in a filibuster attempt to block the nomination. It sure seems to me that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

At issue is the fact that SCOTUS has been pretty evenly divided ideologically for quite some time, with many cases being decided by a 5 – 4 vote, Kennedy being a “wobbler” who vacillates between originalist (“conservative”) and living constitutionalist (“liberal”) positions. Scalia has always been a fervent originalist. In his absence the Court is evenly divided between the two camps (always with the caveat that Kennedy’s something of a wild card, and there’s the occasional Roberts hiccup, too).

So, the argument goes, in a year in which the presidential election is so contentious, particularly on divisive fundamental philosophy, and we’re so close to the actual election, any SCOTUS appointment should be delayed until the newly-elected President can make his or her own choice.

I think there’s merit to that argument, but frankly I don’t really care about it. As far as I’m concerned, the Constitution gives the approval power to the Senate, the GOP controls the Senate, and they don’t need any rationalization to block Obama’s appointments if that’s what they want to do. There’s plenty of precedent, as I’ve already pointed out, and there’s no way such a rabid leftist zealot as Obama is going to make any nomination that’s going to be any good for this country. Period.

But there’s another aspect I don’t hear anyone talking about when considering the upcoming election and SCOTUS nominations.

Scalia was 79 when he died. But Ginsburg, a hard-Left zealot, is 82. For that matter Breyer, another doctrinaire Leftist, is 77. It’s quite conceivable that either or both could retire or die during the first term of the next President. At 79, Kennedy could very well be in play, too.

That means, assuming that Obama can’t successfully replace Scalia, that the next President could very well be able to appoint four SCOTUS Justices. So let’s do some math and see how this could play out.

Let’s assume that over the next President’s first term three more SCOTUS seats open up, for a total of four. The current ideological split, in Scalia’s absence, is essentially 4 – 4. If the Dem/socialists win, they can appoint 4 leftists, giving them a 6 – 3 (Roberts, Thomas, and Alito) majority. If the GOP wins, they might also get to appoint 4 conservatives, giving them a 7 – 2 (Kagan and Sotomayor) majority.

Anybody have any questions about how important this election is? It’s way past time for the GOP to get its act together, stop screwing around, and – for once – get it right.

Way back in the Stone Age, when I was in the Army, I worked in Military Intelligence and had a Top Secret security clearance. Unless in the intervening decades the rules regarding the safeguarding of classified materials have become incredibly relaxed, there’s no doubt in my mind that Hillary Clinton is unquestionably guilty of violating the applicable laws regarding the handling of such materials.

But I’m not interested in focusing in on that particular aspect of the matter. The news coverage has made much of the fact that the FBI and other investigative entities (inspectors-general, etc.) have been carrying out their own inquiries into these matters, and that the results may be referred to various prosecutorial bodies for criminal indictment and prosecution.

All of this has led to speculation of what would happen if the FBI (or another agency) made a criminal referral – meaning a submittal of the evidence with a recommendation that criminal prosecution take place – to the Justice Department (the appropriate agency as this is a federal matter), which is currently run by an Obama appointee, Attorney-General Loretta Lynch.

Clinton herself – a lawyer, it must be noted – has put forth two excuses for her actions. The first is that none of the material was “marked” with a classification when she illegally handled it through her private email server. This is legalese for saying “yes, I actually did it, but pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”, because in reality the law itself doesn’t make any such distinction. If material is even POTENTIALLY classifiable it must be treated as if it IS classified until the matter is clarified and ultimately determined.

Her second excuse is the hoary time-worn Bill Clinton Era “vast right-wing conspiracy” nonsense. According to her, unnamed conspirators are ginning this entire controversy up to derail her presidential aspirations. The problem for her again, just as it was when her husband was President, is that it’s simply an absolutely ridiculous claim that would require completely unrelated – and beyond improbable – groups of people to coordinate their efforts, all while operating sub rosa, none of whom actually know each other, involving the press, government officials, elected officials, the FBI and all the hundreds of agents THERE working on the case, to coordinate their efforts while making sure that there’s not one single leak about the existence of such a conspiracy. Not to mention that such a conspiracy would have to include such conservative bastions as the New York Times, LA Times, CNN, and USA Today.

And, oh yeah… Fox News.

Now that we can leave Fantasy Land behind, let’s take a quick look at what these investigations mean in the REAL world.

If, as I expect, the FBI refers the case to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, Obama and his minions will be faced with three possible courses of action.

1. Submit the case to a Federal Grand Jury to secure an indictment, and prosecute Clinton on the charges. Perhaps appoint a special prosecutor to handle the case to avoid any appearance of impropriety. This would be the proper course to take, and regardless of the outcome Obama would immunize himself from accusations of favoritism or corruption. As Clinton herself stated during her January 17th debate with Bernie Sanders, no one is “too big to jail”. Certainly David Petraeus can attest to that fact, and his offenses were far less egregious.

2. Quash or ignore the criminal referral. Try to bury it. Exercise “prosecutorial discretion” and refuse to act on it. There are several problems for Obama and Lynch with this course of action. The most obvious is that it would rightly be seen as an act of pure politics, overtly corrupt in nature, and both Obama’s and Lynch’s reputations and legacies would be permanently tarred by such an act.

Had this scandal simply faded away over time, that tactic could have worked. As with other scandals in this administration, it would have become “old news” not worth pursuing, and it was “time for everyone to move on”. But that hasn’t happened, and at the rate the revelations just keep on dribbling out, I don’t think it ever will until some kind of action takes place as a result.

Further, there are a lot of people in the FBI, people of real principle, who won’t let the matter drop if the Obama people refuse to act on a legitimate criminal referral. I have no doubt that under those circumstances details would “leak” to the press and various congressmen. All of which would result in the sliming of Obama’s name along the lines of Nixon’s Watergate episode. Frankly, I don’t see an egotist like Obama allowing the actions of Clinton to affect his own perceived “legacy” in such a negative manner.

3. Obama could issue a blanket pardon. This action comes attached with all the negative implications for Obama of the previous option, with no upside for him. I think that it could still allow Clinton to legally continue her run for office, but I can’t imagine her actually getting anywhere as a pardoned felon, or even misdemeanant. As outrageously ambitious as she is, I think even she would withdraw from the race at that point. Even for Dem/socialists there are some things impossible to overlook or ignore, and a blanket presidential pardon for crimes of this nature is one of them. Her dream of becoming President would be dead.

In my estimation the fundamental underlying issue that’s going to determine how this matter proceeds is Obama’s own overarching self-interest and egotism in preserving his goal of being viewed favorably by history. Far from being a man who takes responsibility for the failures of those in his administration, he’s known for being quick to throw anyone under the bus if their actions reflect badly on him. I fully expect a prosecution to move forward.

This doesn’t bode at all well for Clinton’s political ambitions, but for once – in this instance – Obama’s ego actually could work to the benefit of the country as a whole. Even if it’s in spite of himself.